How Good Is Tyler Van Dyke? It’s Hard To Know.
The 2023 NFL Draft is expected to feature a number of talented quarterbacks, unlike this past year. Miami quarterback Tyler Van Dyke is one of many names on the 2023 NFL Draft watch list. This draft is so deep that it wouldn’t shock me if it broke an NFL record for the number of QB’s taken in the first round. With all that being said, does anybody actually know how good Van Dyke is… because I don’t.
I watched two full Miami games this past year. The first was Week 1 to start the year against Alabama. Miami go pummeled and Van Dyke wasn’t even the starter yet. The second was against North Carolina where he completed 44% of his throws on 45 attempts including 3 picks. Not exactly the best material to make the case that Van Dyke is a stud.
Overall the numbers were pretty good for his true freshman season. A 25-6 TD to INT ratio at 62.6% is a pretty good starting point. The problem is now trying to project how big of a step forward Van Dyke can take with a new coaching staff in place.
Mario Cristobal recently gave high praise to Van Dyke even comparing him to Justin Herbert who Cristobal coached at Oregon. It’s an interesting comp because the job of scouting Van Dyke probably just got that much more difficult.
The revisionist history stuff on Herbert, in reality, is hilarious. Herbert was always a wildcard heading into the draft process. It just turns out his talent shined through and the system at Oregon didn’t do him any favors. For those that remember correctly, I went from loving Herbert to hating him and a lot of it in hindsight had to do with Herbert’s inability to make plays outside of the shit offense Oregon was running.
Cristobal wants to run that spread power attack with Miami. Run the football, get the ball to their weapons quickly, limit the mistakes, trust the offensive line to do their job, win the game at the line of scrimmage. That’s the type of guy Cristobal is. The guy has no reason to change. He’s a great coach and really good recruiter. It’s just worth pointing out the last time Cristobal had a Herbert level talent, he didn’t get the most out of him.
Van Dyke does have talent but it’s still hard to know just where his ceiling sits today. 6-foot-4, good arm, and can move but more of a pocket guy. Accuracy is a question mark. More of an upright delivery. Long release. Bit stiff legged but feels comfortable in clean pockets. Decent footwork and can bounce on his toes. Throws a pretty good deep ball. Things can change over time but as we stand right now, there is a lot of work to do.
Mel Kiper currently has Van Dyke as his QB3 and the 12th player off the board. Van Dyke is also a +3000 to win the Heisman which is currently the 6th best odds in the sport. Really high praise that I’m just really hesitant to buy into. How good is Van Dyke? Is he good enough to overcome a conservative head coach and a poor wide receiver room? We’re about to find out.
I think the College Football and NFL Draft community loves finding that sleeper quarterback prior to the year starts. I get it and can buy this one a hell of a lot more than Will Levis at Kentucky. We’re all excited for college football and I can’t wait which quarterback takes a Kenny Pickett type leap into this very sort of conversation. Maybe it’s Van Dyke? Maybe it’s not.
